Brian R. Jacobson

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Assistant Professor
Cinema Studies Institute and Department of History

Research and Teaching:

Brian R. Jacobson is a historian of film and modern visual culture. His research spans the history and theory of moving image media, the history and philosophy of technology, environmental history, and art and architectural history. His writing has been published in venues including The Atlantic, theLos Angeles Review of Books, Film Quarterly, Screen, Framework, Film History, and History and Technology.

He is the author of Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space (Columbia University Press, 2015), a book that situates the world’s first film studios in the architectural and technological developments of urban industrial modernity and argues that cinema should be understood as a critical component of what historians of technology have termed the “human-built world.” His research has been supported by institutions including the Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, the Carnegie Trust, and the University of Rochester Humanities Center.

Current projects include a monograph about the visual culture of energy in post-WWII France, an edited book about film studios around the world, and articles generally concerned with the visual and material culture of energy and the environment.

Professor Jacobson teaches courses about film history and historiography, cinema and ecology, cinema and architecture, and film/media technologies

Education

Ph.D. University of Southern California
S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S. Appalachian State University

Select Publications:

Books

Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015)